This invention relates to methods for creating a customized audio or video program from a variety of digitized content sources.
Now that the Internet, and other networks, make a wide variety of digitized content electronically available, there is the need and capability to provide a selection and scheduling system to automate choosing among these to create a customized stream of material of interest to listeners, from a wide variety of content sources. Prior art has proposed several solutions.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,038,591 to Wolfe et al. discloses a system which can distribute customized music selections to users, according to listener preferences and other factors. However, this system cannot utilize live feeds as sources, cannot interrupt a first audio source with a second audio source, and does not allow the user to make specific audio content selections.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,721,827 to Logan et al. discloses a system for distributing information to users, where said information could be in digitized audio form. However, the audio can only be that stored on the single said system, and the audio does not include live feeds.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,892,536, 5,986,692, and 6,088,455 to Logan et al. disclose systems for generating a proprietary program signal according to topics of interest to an individual. However, the system only monitors a single broadcast signal, and according to an analysis of the broadcast signal or a communication system which carries information on the characteristics of said broadcast signal, indicates when the broadcast signal has a topic of interest. There is no capability of selecting from a variety of digitized content providers, no capability of the user equipment specifying the source of the broadcast signal, and no capability of interrupting the broadcast signal from a first signal source with the broadcast signal from a second signal source.
There are world wide web sites currently available that enable a user to construct an audio program from selections made at their web site. For example, www.audiobasket.com provides a variety of Internet-based audio sources, however, it does not track what listeners have already heard (so going back to the site too soon to listen again results in the exact same audio being heard), it does not allow listening to live audio (so you cannot listen to a radio station in real-time), and you cannot interrupt one segment with another. Other sites, such as www.kerbango.com, www.sonicbox.com, and www.penguinradio.com, allow you to listen to real-time radio and other audio feeds, but have no way to interrupt one audio program with another, have no information on when particular types of information are presented on the audio feeds, and have no way to build lists of sources to sequentially receive according to a schedule. Another site, www.voquette.com, allows both archived and real-time audio to be received in sequence, but again, real-time audio cannot be interrupted at particular times, there is no information on when audio sources have particular types of information available, and there is no way to select a web page of archived audio segments, and later listen to them, one at a time.